


Romance Novelish

by ForASecondThereWedWon



Series: Spidey-shots, Spidey-shots, now they're done, thanks a lot <3 [38]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Canon Divergence - Spider-Man: Far From Home, Clumsiness, Crushes, F/M, Fantasizing, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, Idiots in Love, Pining, Prompt Fic, Summer Vacation, Tumblr Prompt, accident-prone!Peter Parker, it's Far From Home minus that a-hole Mysterio, romance-reader!Michelle Jones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:49:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26197405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ForASecondThereWedWon/pseuds/ForASecondThereWedWon
Summary: MJ's European vacation is a romance. Peter's is more like an episode ofJackass.
Relationships: Michelle Jones/Peter Parker, background Betty Brant/Ned Leeds
Series: Spidey-shots, Spidey-shots, now they're done, thanks a lot <3 [38]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1368034
Comments: 50
Kudos: 116





	Romance Novelish

**Author's Note:**

> This fic's prompt (from Tumblr): 33. Everyone thinks I should stay away from you because you're dangerous

Brad talks too much and, unfortunately, he talks even more after MJ pulls out one of the novels she packed and raises it in front of her nose to dissuade further conversation. Apparently, the fact that the book has a bare-chested man and swooning, beribboned lady on the cover comes across as an invitation for comments from her seatmate. MJ glares at Brad. She’s tired of his attention. She wants to spend the rest of the flight living vicariously through this fictional woman about to get some Georgian D. If Brad will ever let her fucking get past the first chapter.

“Because it’s good,” she finally snaps, turning to face him when he continues to question why anyone with any self-respect would read a romance novel. “It’s wish-fulfillment. It’s not degrading, it’s empowering to read about a woman finding exactly… exactly what she…”

MJ trails off, attention snagged by Peter in the corner of her eye, several rows back. He’s getting up from his seat.

“…what she wants,” she continues distractedly, watching Peter twist to wriggle out towards the aisle. Even through his sweater, _look at those shoulders_. “…and, uh, going after it.”

Peter straightens up and slams his head into the overhead compartment. Wincing, she blinks and refocuses on Brad’s unconvinced expression.

“Ok,” he argues (she rolls her eyes), “but a woman going after what she wants shouldn’t be some _fantasy_. _You’re_ not the timid type. You’d go after the guy in real life.”

MJ gives a small longing sigh and darts a look at Peter’s back as he heads for the bathroom.

“You’d think so,” she mumbles, disappointed in herself.

“The _right_ guy,” Brad informs her emphatically, “wouldn’t make you wonder if he was interested. He’d make it obvious that he was into you and then you could just respond.” He shifts towards her, tone seeming to urge a confession. “He wouldn’t leave any room for doubt or misunderstanding. He’d give plenty of hints.”

His hand just brushes her knee and she shifts in her seat, away from him, whipping her novel back up in front of her face.

“Too bad he can’t take one,” she says and proceeds to ignore Brad until he stops talking to her.

An hour later, Peter trips up the aisle of the plane and knocks into the arm she had balanced on her armrest, propping her cheek up. He grabs her shoulder to straighten her before she can bang her head into anything. Heart hammering from more than the collision, MJ looks up at him. She sticks her finger between the pages and offers a shy smile.

“Hey,” he says. “So…”

He’s obviously nervous; MJ hears Brad make an impatient noise beside her and turns her back more fully towards him to concentrate on Peter. Peter, who’s lifting an arm and smoothing the back of his hair like he might’ve messed it up dozing against his seat’s headrest. MJ’s mind is back in the world of her book for a minute. The swell of Peter’s biceps. Her gaze slides down his body like butter on a hot cob of corn. The way his jeans hug his thighs. She swallows.

He swings his upper body abruptly to look at something and his raised elbow clocks a man who’s getting his carryon down in the ear.

“Oh shit,” Peter gasps, immediately apologizing and trying to help.

After the situation’s resolved―accepted as an accident―and Peter’s returning the man’s luggage to the compartment for him, he spins back to MJ and seems to lose his nerve. He gives her a weak laugh and scurries away. MJ slumps back into her seat.

Wearily, she holds her book before her eyes. The protagonist is in the middle of what MJ expects to be a futile attempt to resist her feelings for the hunk.

“‘ _Everyone thinks I should stay away from you because you’re dangerous!_ ’” she reads.

Her real-life love interest of choice isn’t exactly a historical bad boy of the is-that-a-dagger-concealed-in-your-breeches-or-are-you-just-happy-to-see-me variety, but dangerous? MJ sneaks a peek and witnesses Peter swipe a woman’s drink clear off her tray as he tries to maneuver his way to his middle seat. Yeah, you could say that being close to him is a hazard.

* * *

“MJ,” Betty asks in Venice, “are you sure? You could share with Ned and I.”

And she gets this gushy look on her face that would make MJ say no even if she’d been considering trying to squeeze into the two-seater gondola with the brand-new couple.

“Nah, I’ll be alright with Parker.”

She sounds more certain than she feels and Betty gives her a doubtful look.

“Are you sure? Peter? In a narrow little boat? On _water_?”

“Yep. What could go wrong?”

It’s a joke because every one of Betty’s words hints at the possible pitfalls. Still, MJ knows a chance for romance when she sees one. The two of them, thigh-to-thigh in a gondola, gliding down the canal with no one and nothing to interrupt them? Ideal. Being alone with him (minus one gondolier) long enough for a gondola ride might give her time to form the words to say… well, she’s not sure what yet. But she’ll form them! The sway of the water beneath them and the centuries-old architecture to either side will inspire her. Not to mention her crush’s proximity. He already said yes when she asked if he might want to go together. Of course, MJ phrased it like she just needed someone to split the cost (something this touristy does _not_ come cheap), but hopefully he’ll see past her practicality and directly into her heart.

“You’re right,” Betty says. She smiles. “I’m sure everything will be just fi―”

The girls turn and jump in reaction to Ned grabbing the back of Peter’s hoodie right before he can tumble off the dock and into the canal. MJ and Betty exchange a look.

“Will you hold my backpack?”

“Mhmm.” Betty waits while MJ tucks her romance novel inside and zips the bag shut. “Good luck,” she offers.

“Thanks.”

Once they’re actually on the water, MJ feels better. The way the gondolier propels them smoothly down the canal is very relaxing. She turns her face up, grateful for the kiss of the sun after all those hours on the plane. It’s also easier to look up and squint than it is to look sideways and meet Peter’s eye. Every time she does, they glance quickly away from each other.

“Maybe we should take a picture,” Peter suggests out of nowhere. MJ looks at him.

“Definitely. To commemorate the trip.”

“Right.”

He gives her a quick flick of a smile, brown eyes so close when they’re facing each other like this. There are more freckles springing up across his nose the longer they’re out in the sun. MJ wants to find a way for them to stay out all afternoon.

“I can take it,” she offers. He nods eagerly and she opens the camera on her phone, raising her arm to get a good angle.

“Um, should I…?”

Peter shifts on the seat. His legs press more surely against hers and he cranes his head forward awkwardly.

“No,” MJ instructs. “Get closer.”

She only watches him on the phone screen, but her breaths grow shallow as she sees him stare at the side of her face, then move his face right next to hers.

“Closer,” she urges.

His arm comes around her, touching the seat on the far side of her before he cautiously decides to hold her waist.

“Closer.” It’s a whisper.

His cheek rests gently against hers and MJ holds her breath.

“Look at the camera,” he says softly, though when she turns her head just a little, he’s not. He’s looking at her.

A speedboat zips past causing sudden choppy waves and Peter reacts instantly. He leaps into a rigid, defensive posture and something goes flying out of his hand or from up his sleeve. MJ doesn’t have a chance to figure out what it was or ask him about it because Peter yanks his arm back. Simultaneously, the gondolier’s oar goes sailing over their heads and, like a person with a broken leg who has their crutch kicked out from under their armpit, the gondolier topples over the side of the boat.

“Oh my god!” she gasps, flinging herself forward to grab the edge of the gondola, trying to see into the murky, churning water.

MJ misses the moment Peter jumps, but she feels his sweatshirt land in her lap and hears the splash. She slides across the bench to check the water on the other side, where he must have dived in. What should she do? What _can_ she do? There are people on land stopping to look. She stares back in a panic, floating alone in the gondola.

“Help!” she calls to them, but rather than trust any of them to react, she starts to text Mr. Harrington, phone shaking in her hand. Their teacher gave everyone his number for emergencies and she doesn’t know what it’ll do to the poor guy for her to use it, but there’s no other choice…

Until Peter and the gondolier break the surface. Now MJ’s yelling at _them_.

“Why did you do that? What the hell, Parker?”

Thankfully, he ignores her panic (she’ll be embarrassed about it later) and holds the side of the gondola still while water runs into his eyes and the gondolier flops back on board, muttering in curt Italian. Peter paddles around the boat to retrieve the oar, now cracked in half. The gondolier accepts it with a nod.

“Aren’t you getting in?” MJ demands when the vessel begins to move and Peter’s still treading water.

“We were almost back to where we started,” he points out. “I’ll just swim it.”

She turns away from him and puts her hand to her forehead, somewhere between relieved and fuming. Her other hand unconsciously grips the sweatshirt in her lap. Once they’ve docked, MJ angrily passes the sweatshirt off to Ned and takes her backpack back from Betty.

“What happened?” they’re asking her, and MJ’s opening her mouth to explain the entire thing, about how Peter Parker is not only dangerous but an _idiot_ , truthfully crushed that this moment slipped away from the two of them, when she glances towards the dock. Instead of speaking, her mouth just drops open further.

It’s like goddamn slow-motion.

He plants his hands on the weathered wood and hauls himself out of the water, plaid shirt plastered to his body. All the air leaves MJ’s chest as Peter shakes his head then slicks his wet hair back. Jesus Christ, she could swear she sees every drop of water cascading down his face and over the curve of his jaw. Light glints off the surface of the canal behind him and he walks, looking directly at her. Without breaking eye contact, she snatches the sweatshirt from Ned’s hands.

“Um, here,” she says, offering it to a sopping-wet Peter. This is better than the books.

“Thanks, MJ. At least that’s dry.”

MJ gives him a pathetically awed smile at the self-deprecating humour and has trouble letting go of the hoodie for a second, sorta hoping he’ll tug the whole thing forward and she’ll end up pressed to his chest. Yes, the front of her clothes will get wet, and yes, he smells like the canal, but she can overlook those things. _Haul me against you_ , she thinks intently. _Show me what it feels like to be a woman ruled by nothing but her passions in the embrace of your strong arms_.

“Dammit!” Peter yelps, one eye clamped shut when he pulls the sweatshirt away from his now-dry face. “I wiped my face with the zipper!”

She could die. She could honestly just fucking die here. After Ned and Betty find a different gondola to rent, Peter goes back to the hotel for dry clothes and she wanders alone. Not far, just enough to find a bench where she sits and retrieves her novel from her backpack. God, right when she thought she and Peter were getting somewhere, that speedboat! The oar somehow jerked from the gondolier’s hands! Reality is bullshit. MJ cups her chin in her hand and turns the page.

* * *

They’re on the bus to Prague and MJ’s grateful for the stretch of time where she’s not expected to explore or listen to guided tours that tell her buildings that are _clearly_ haunted aren’t, and other questionable facts. Do they even _know_ how many people have been murdered in Venice? Neither does she, but the city had a very murdery vibe that she loved and would’ve appreciated hearing more about. And they call this an educational school trip. Ha.

She’s using this time to read. Read and observe. She’s on her third romance novel now. She only packed five, but if she gets through them all before they fly home from Paris, she’ll just start the first one again. They really aren’t tedious. Especially when she has material right in front of her eyes to project the characters onto. Peter pokes his head around the side of his seat and his gaze meets hers. Everything inside her flutters as though ruffled by an internal breeze. He gives her a sideways little smile that shows his teeth. _Ravish me_ , MJ thinks, ducking back behind her open book to hide the way her face is lighting up like a flare.

She should just go talk to him. It would be thoughtful, a nice gesture, since his best friend is totally consumed with cozying up to Betty where they’re sitting together. Not having Ned to constantly hang out with has gotta be rough on Peter. Instead of barricading the seat beside her with her feet to ward off Brad, MJ could sit next to him. _Soothe his loneliness_.

“Do it,” she mutters to herself. “Get up.”

Pulse surging, MJ sets her novel aside and grips the back of the seat in front of hers to pull herself to her feet. There’s no need to be nervous. She and Peter… they have chemistry. There’s something there, just waiting to be realized if she can be brave enough to make a move. She ignores Brad, who looks up excitedly when she passes his seat. Brad’s fine, but she’d like him better if he didn’t feel like _that_ towards her. Not when she feels like _this_ towards someone else.

Peter’s at the front of the bus as they zoom down winding roads that hug steep cliffs. The scenery’s all gorgeous, she’s sure. She just can’t take her eyes off him. _Confidence_ , MJ thinks to herself, trying to channel the heroine in her current read. That woman has three different men metaphorically eating out of the palm of her hand. MJ could do that. MJ has that power. This is just one sixteen-year-old on whom she happens to have a very large crush. She holds her head high and strides forward.

And in some quick struggle with Flash, Peter knocks the other boy out cold.

MJ freezes as Peter jolts back in evident surprise at his own action. He really shouldn’t be able to get into that amount of trouble while they’re all stuck on this bus. It just isn’t _probable_. She turns and slinks back to her seat before he can notice that his latest attack of awkwardness (and the ensuing collateral damage) had an audience. Rather than sit there trying to figure out how Peter incapacitated Flash with such a swift, soundless hit, MJ half-reads and half-daydreams. Her fantasies are full of his body slanting over hers for a completely different reason than to check her vitals after an accidental punch in the face.

* * *

There’s a hush in the theatre, still a long time before the opera will begin. Sound feels low to MJ, as though it’s billowing along the floor like smoke, everything dampened and expectant. Peter wavers and stops in the aisle. They’re going to sit together. Or, they were.

“What is it?” she asks.

He huffs an uncertain laugh.

“Just don’t really feel like watching an opera, I guess.”

“I know what you mean,” she agrees. Opera is about passion―lust, betrayal, wild consequences from the actions that heightened emotions lead to. It’s a lot like her romance novels, so, actually, opera appeals to her, but she’s not so sure about her ability to sit quietly and watch all of those things unfold on the stage while Peter’s seated next to her, the sleeve of his jacket rubbing against her arm.

“You do?” He seems surprised to find she’s on his side. Maybe he was worried about disappointing her.

MJ nods and offers a quick smile.

“You wanna… get out of here?” Peter looks at her warily after floating the suggestion. Her smile broadens.

“Yes.”

“Ok.” He glances back towards the row packed with their classmates. “As long as nobody sees us leave, I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

“Oh, Harrington won’t notice. I told him Brad has a phobia of any kind of representational work, so he’s pretty focused on trying to comfort him.”

“And Brad?”

“Brad has no idea what’s going on.”

If her smirk is a touch vengeful, Peter doesn’t have any words of judgement for her. They walk together to the exit. She’s smiling hard towards the floor and has the feeling he is too. When the door catches the back of Peter’s jacket and shuts on it, MJ holds it open to free him, shrugging off his thanks. What’s a minor wardrobe mishap here or there? _Tear this dress off me_ , she thinks as they step out into the night. They’re just a couple of teenagers, unchaperoned in a foreign city after dark. She isn’t scared as she walks next to Peter. Nothing could feel safer. In the historical novels she likes, there’s often a charming French gentleman or a dashing Spanish rogue, but this boy from home suits her just fine, with the smile never totally leaving his lips and the level of his head slightly below hers. MJ shivers and allows Peter to help her into her jean jacket. Sure, it’s the air bringing goosebumps to her arms.

They hold hands out of necessity, trying not to be separated in the crowd. Though it’s warmer while they’re moving with this teaming river of festivalgoers, she’s glad to be wearing her jacket. Strangers graze it, but only Peter is permitted to touch her bare skin. Their fingers aren’t locked or anything and still his hand clamped around hers is enough to make her feel electrifyingly possessed. _Look!_ she wants to tell these strangers. _I’m with him!_ Being taken in a firm hold is not, for her, mutually exclusive from consensual physical contact. When it’s a yes, MJ prefers an unambiguous yes; when touch is granted, she isn’t averse to rough neediness. Of course, this is all based on theory, not personal experience, on the way heat crawls up her neck and behind her ears when she reads a passage where a heroine is hastened to a secret place by her lover before being pushed against the wall, arms pinned, as the man looses her front-fastening gown with his teeth.

With a quick sideways glance, she presses herself a little closer to Peter and feels his fingers flex around her hand in response. She longs for a love affair abroad. What’s apparently more realistic―because this is what happens―is that she and Peter are too shy to continue holding hands when they escape the throng. That it’s too loud to hear each other talking and the requirement of tipping their mouths towards each others’ ears to be heard goes from sensual to annoying disappointingly fast. After they decide to go back to the theatre and pretend to have exited just ahead of the rest of their class, MJ thinks Peter’s changed his mind. He comes lurching into her space. Is he going to kiss her?! No, he catches himself and shouts that somebody bumped into him. Then he apologizes. Dammit, there’s nothing more she would’ve wanted from this night than for Peter’s momentum to drive them stumbling into some tidy alley off the main thoroughfare! She could’ve threaded her fingers desperately into his hair while they kissed, let him feel her up a little. MJ communicates in gestures that it’s no problem and they’re both too jumpy to hold hands as they weave upstream through the people.

After this failure of courage on both their parts, she doesn’t expect Peter to show up at the door of her hotel room later that night. She’s lying on her stomach, reading, when she hears the knock.

The sound of the revelers is still there, but in the distance. The streets they tread are quiet and full of all the ambiance of cobblestones and yellow lamplight. They could almost be back in time. _Run away with me_ , is MJ’s silly thought. She doesn’t really want the trouble that would cause―depleting their euros, the worry of their families, rebooking flights, probably killing Mr. Harrington with the stress of it all―just the idea of being alone with him, of buying the two of them more time. In her head, she bats at the idea of her and Peter, in love and on the run from anyone who’d try to stop them, like a child whacking at a piñata. No hope of splitting it open.

Still, she _is_ alone with him and his profile’s never looked so nice as it does cut out against the velvety dark of Prague’s sky. Peter seems nervous, again. He gets that way with her. Would it reassure him if she hinted in the subtlest way possible that the only time the words ‘making love’ don’t cause her stomach to turn is when she applies them to her and him? Is she the only one set on fire by the possibilities of the darkness? MJ wants to see their shadows intertwine.

She guesses at what he needs for her to say, suppressing the flowing verbal pornography of what _she_ wants to say. It’s obvious that he’s trying to reveal his secret identity. The gondola mishap, the instinctual way he navigated them through all those people earlier―there are multiple examples from this trip that she added to her accumulated observations of him back home to come to the conclusion that Peter is Spider-Man.

But her assertion surprises him. He hooks his shoe on a cobblestone and goes sprawling. MJ frowns down.

“Why didn’t you catch yourself?” she asks. It doesn’t come out sounding very sympathetic, but she’s scientific right now, studying him as his alter ego.

Peter shoves himself up from the ground and dusts his hands off on his jeans. MJ hopes his palms aren’t scraped up.

“I always seem to have a little trouble with my senses when I’m around you,” he says with a bashful smile.

At first, she’s insulted. Is he blaming _her_ for his clumsiness? After all the time she’s devoted to constructing fantasies revolving around him in tight trousers, tall boots, and torn-open shirts! Then, she gets it.

“You do?”

“Definitely,” Peter admits. “Everything else sorta blurs out and I can only focus on where you are. Where your body is in relation to mine. Totally lose track of my surroundings.”

He says the last sentence while dropping his gaze to her lips, which she swiftly licks in preparation. MJ’s ready for her first kiss… which never comes because Peter’s phone goes off. He answers, since it’s his best friend calling, then informs her that Mr. Harrington’s looking for them and Ned can only stall and make up wild excuses for so long. There’s no time to do anything but race back to the hotel, the atmosphere that was so much like it is in her books diminishing with every step. As she trudges to her room, feeling restless and left hanging, Brad pops out of his. Says he was worried about her. That he would’ve been happy to go with her if she’d only let him know. Mentions how he wouldn’t have gotten lost the way _Parker_ obviously did…

“What were you even doing with him?” Brad asks as she fiddles with her key card. “Trying to stop him from wandering into traffic?”

MJ whips her head around to glare at him.

“Trying to prove _you_ right.”

She gets inside and closes the door on him so she won’t have to elaborate, remind him of what he told her on the plane. That she’s the kind of person who’d go after the guy. Well, she isn’t. She didn’t go after Peter. She blew it. In the morning, they’re flying to Paris, and then home two days later. There won’t be semi-private gondolas or chances to steal away from the rest of their group while they’re watching an opera. MJ really believed this would be the vacation where she transformed into the kind of person she’d want to read about in a book. She’d better stick to reading because she’s not even close.

* * *

Paris is in a heatwave. Some of her classmates appear to be disenchanted by the fact that they’re too hot and uncomfortable to strut down the boulevards like models on a catwalk as the pastel buildings of picture-perfect arrondissements rear around them. They’re feeling too limp to be chic, but MJ is thriving. She eats hearty sandwiches of crusty bread and layered meats and cheeses and ties her t-shirt up around her waist like a crop top when sweat rolls down her spine. She feels like a better-fed working-class woman of the 18th century. Give her a Louis XVI to drag from his bed in this epicenter of revolutions. In the story she imagines for herself now, her bosom doesn’t heave from the breathlessness of stolen moments with a paramour but from the exertion of storming the Place de la Concorde for justice and the disruption of a diseased social contract.

Group activities and being worn out by the sun by dinnertime prevent MJ from really talking to Peter. Also, he keeps giving her these looks, which she attributes to her stating that he’s Spider-Man and then the two of them never discussing it further. They can’t, in front of their friends and Mr. Harrington. She thinks maybe they will when the Louvre swallows them for a whole afternoon, but the shuffling feet of visitors make the words clog in her throat. Her new persona doesn’t follow her inside; central air extinguishes the fire of the woman she is in the streets. Instead, she studies the fold and flow of painted fabrics, yearning to drape herself across Peter’s body the way Da Vinci swathed Mary in blue.

MJ wakes up to oppressive humidity on the final morning. It feels cool enough in the hotel, but her skin grows damp in the fifteen minutes between toweling off from her shower and sitting down in the breakfast room. Mr. Harrington appears to be at the end of his rope partly because, as he notifies them, Mr. Dell’s apparently sleeping in until they have to leave for the airport. The rest of his stress is just from existing, MJ guesses. He’s too paralyzed by anxiety to even think about accompanying his students on an excursion. Fortunately, enough of them are interested in going up the Eiffel Tower―until now, they’ve only seen it from the ground―that Mr. Harrington permits them to leave in a pack. They nod awkwardly when he gives an intense directive for them to ‘protect each other out there’ as though they’re embarking on a journey across a minefield.

She’s kind of surprised at how quickly their group breaks apart. Some of her classmates, like Flash, clearly had no intention of doing anything but skipping off to freedom, but come on. Doesn’t anybody want to examine the Eiffel Tower for traces of mind-control technology? The only one MJ’s glad to see go is Brad, though he shoots her a look like, _Aren’t you tempted to follow me?_ She is not. When Peter sticks to her side, promising to stay with her all the way to the very top (frazzled by his sudden closeness, she pedantically informs him that they don’t let people up that high), her heart seems to shudder and glisten like the lightshow that illuminates the Tower at night. Betty and Ned are coming too, but they’re lost in their own little world, swinging their clasped hands between them and stopping to make Peter take pictures of them in cute poses as they make their way to their destination.

On the way up the Eiffel Tower, MJ hardly breathes. It’s the heat, or it’s Peter there beside her, smiling whenever she catches his eye. Or it’s some kind of copycat impulse because _he_ hardly seems to be breathing either, hands in his pockets and chewing his lip in her peripheral vision. Miraculously, on the platform, there’s air. She wouldn’t go so far as to call it a breeze, but it feels like air is moving around her instead of her pushing thickly through it as she has been the past two days. She feels exposed, as though at the prow of a ship. She pictures herself captured by pirates only to become their leader after seducing and bamboozling their captain, whose hands prove to be as callused as his words are callous when they have their way with each other in his shabby quarters.

Ned and Betty hurry along the walkway in search of the ideal backdrop for the series of selfies they’re about to take. While MJ’s watching them go, Peter grabs her hand. The action’s not like it was on the swarming streets of Prague; his hold is gentle, cradling her hand as though to cushion a jewel. Speaking of…

“I got this for you,” he says, drawing a chain from his pocket with his free hand. A chipped black pendant, glass by how it shines in the morning light, twists slowly before her eyes. “In Venice.”

“You got that for me?”

“Yeah. It got beaten up a little in my luggage. I’m s―”

“It’s perfect. I love it,” she assures him quickly. Tentatively, she lifts a hand to finger the smooth petals. “I can’t believe you got this for me.”

“I thought you’d like it. Black―”

“Dahlia,” MJ finishes for him. His hair’s curling in the humidity and she just wants to take his face between her hands and give him a kiss. They stare at each other a moment and she thinks, finally, maybe, will he? Will she?

“Here,” Peter offers. “I can put it on you, if you want.”

She smiles and nods, turning to present him with her back and gathering her hair up away from her neck. His hands come around in front and she tries to watch them without lowering her chin too much. Trying to be steady for him. Either it’s taking him a while to fasten the finnicky catch or he’s as appreciative of their nearness as she is because she can feel the warmth of his hands resting against the nape of her neck. _Just wrap your arms around me_ , she thinks. _Seize my hips as I swoon against your solid chest_. _Spider-Man should be a lover as well as a fighter_. Eventually, his hands drop and she steels herself to face him.

Taking a deep breath, MJ says, “Tell me how it looks.”

She’s still turning as Peter takes a step back (presumably to assess the way she looks wearing the necklace), bumps into the guardrail, and overreacts so aggressively that he goes vaulting over it.

“PETER!” she screams, springing forward.

When she looks over the side, he’s hanging there with his fist closed around some kind of stretchy, sticky thread. His webs. Peter gives her a sheepish smile and she sighs in relief that the dork didn’t just plummet to his death.

“Looks great,” he says. MJ rolls her eyes.

“Just get up here so I can kiss you.”

He grins.

But other people on the platform are reacting, exclaiming, turning their cameras and phones towards the guy hanging by what probably looks like a rope from a distance. And maybe the two of them, Peter and MJ―a team, a unit, a couple―could’ve played it off that way if he didn’t decide to swing back and forth to gather momentum and then flip up to land beside her. There are gasps and other noises of surprise.

“What are you going to do?” she demands, trying to block him from view as well as she can.

He gives her a determined look.

“I know the first thing,” Peter says, then grips the back of her neck as he kisses her, suddenly suave, suddenly sure, and suddenly she’s the one who can’t trust her own damn legs, going wobbly beneath her as she presses back into the kiss. His mouth responds urgently and his stability counteracts her shakiness to keep her on her feet.

When he breaks the kiss, MJ tilts her head and immediately goes after another one. Hey, they’re in the City of Love. She’s gonna get her romance.


End file.
